A cruise ship with 110 people sick with norovirus onboard has docked in Florida on Monday. The Caribbean Princess departed Fort Lauderdale on 28 April for a nearly two‑week voyage and reached Port Canaveral on 11 May, where it arrived with more than 110 passengers and crew ill following a norovirus outbreak.
It marks the second norovirus outbreak this year reported on a Princess Cruises ship, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Among the 3,116 passengers on board, 102 reported falling ill, along with 13 of the 1,131 crew members, according to CDC data.
Bahamian port officials declined to grant clearance for the ship to dock at Nassau during the cruise “out of an abundance of caution for their community, particularly as the island prepares for upcoming local elections in the coming day,” according to a Princess Cruises media statement.
According to the CDC, Princess Cruises and the ship’s crew responded to the outbreak by intensifying cleaning and disinfection efforts, collecting stool samples from passengers and crew who showed gastrointestinal symptoms, isolating those who were ill, and working closely with the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program to ensure proper sanitation procedures and accurate reporting of new cases.
The CDC saidL “VSP is conducting a field response for an environmental assessment and outbreak investigation to assist the ship in controlling the outbreak.
“Norovirus is often a cause of GI illness outbreaks on cruise ships, but we don’t always know the cause of the outbreak when we begin an investigation
“Finding the agent that caused an outbreak (causative agent) can take time. When an outbreak occurs, people whose symptoms met the case definition are asked to provide stool or vomitus samples.
“These samples are tested to determine the causative agent. Sometimes we can’t determine the causative agent. Reasons can include: People whose symptoms met the case definition did not provide samples. Symptoms started after a voyage ended.”
